Home » Job Search » Murphy’s Law & Job Interviews: If Something Can Go Wrong, It Will

Murphy’s Law & Job Interviews: If Something Can Go Wrong, It Will

Murphy’s Law tells us that if anything can go wrong, it will go wrong, and that also applies to the search for a job.

When it came to my first job interview, Murphy couldn’t have been more right.

I was almost finished with my senior year of college and had made it to the final round of Teach For America (TFA) interviews. For those who don’t know, TFA is an elite national service corps and is known for being extremely difficult to get into. The final round of interviews consisted of a dozen TFA hopefuls presenting a 5-minute lesson each, followed by a group activity, an individual written test, a lunch break, and one-on-one interviews.

To say it was an intense first interview is an understatement.

I spent hours researching the organization and the reading materials provided, and I prepped and practiced my lesson plan over and over. Finally, interview day rolled around. I’d been to the interview location numerous times before. I knew it took forty minutes, so I gave myself two hours to account for whatever might go wrong. Then the following chain of events happened:

I got stuck in construction

I got lost in the construction detours

I got pulled over (though the cop was nice enough to give me directions)